Jury Grants $750,000 to Ex-Litton Employee

A jury has awarded $750,000 to a Thousand Oaks man after finding that he was wrongfully fired by Litton Data Command Systems, an electronics and communications concern in Agoura.

Ali Asghar, 58, was awarded $374,300 in damages for lost income and $375,700 in punitive damages Friday by the Van Nuys Superior Court jury. The case was heard before Judge Martha Goldin.

Asghar claimed that he was fired in November, 1982, because he did not get along with his boss, Amie Shaheen, and that Litton Data Command, a unit of Litton Industries, wrongly attributed the dismissal to Asghar being a poor worker.

Asghar further claimed that Litton’s personnel policies, designed to “assure people fair and equitable treatment” in personnel disputes, failed in this case, said Asghar’s lawyer, Dennis F. Moss.

‘Internal Politics’

“Internal corporate politics is why he really was let go, in my opinion,” Moss said.

Robert W. Speer, a lawyer for Litton, said six current and former Litton employees testified at the trial that Asghar did a poor job and that “their criticism of Asghar was solely related to his poor job performance.”

Litton has not yet decided whether to appeal the jury’s verdict, Speer said. Asghar filed his suit in May, 1983.

Asghar, an American citizen born in Pakistan, worked for Litton two years before being fired. At the time, he was earning $48,000 a year as a program manager involved in a $1.6-billion project to provide Saudi Arabia with a military communications system.

In a contract that size, Litton hires dozens of subcontractors to perform certain work on the project. Asghar’s job was to be Litton’s liaison with one of those subcontractors, Karkar Electronics in San Francisco, which was to perform $15 million worth of work on the system, Speer said.

‘4 Contracts Taken Away’

“At one time, he had five contracts, and four were taken away from him to allow him to do a better job on that one,” Speer said.

Since being fired, Asghar has been an independent consultant. He again is trying to find work with a company, Moss said.

Moss noted that a new state law intended to make plaintiffs meet a stiffer test before being awarded punitive damages took effect Jan. 1. The law says a plaintiff “needs clear and convincing proof of malice, oppression or fraud and that the conduct to get awarded punitive damages has to be despicable under the new statute,” he said.

“This jury found that using a pretext to fire Asghar that was not based in fact was obviously despicable conduct,” Moss said.